This summer, The Solutions Journalism Network selected The Western Carolinian and the Western Carolina Journalist to be one of the eight college media organizations to participate in this year’s Student Media Challenge reporting project and to receive a $7,500 grant to develop, report and publish solutions journalism stories.
The Solutions Journalism Network is a global non-profit organization committed to advancing the field of journalism by promoting and training journalists to produce what they call solutions journalism. This kind of journalism focuses on learning and evaluating the successes and failures of responses made to social problems in order to improve society and approach public discourse constructively.
The Student Media Challenge cohort will involve student newsrooms across the country completing reporting projects focused on the ways people and organizations are addressing youth mental health issues in their communities. This project will be completed with an emphasis on the solutions journalism model that The Solutions Journalism Network is committed to.
This grant and project has allowed for the creation of a special topics course taught by Dr. Katerina Spasovska, communication professor teaching journalism classes. Through this course, WCU’s newsrooms will learn and report on challenges and solutions related to the mental health of WNC’s youth in the context of issues such as Hurricane Helene’s aftermath, poverty, substance use, and climate change.
“[The class] will highlight stories in a different way, on a topic that is usually underreported,” said Spasovska. “Research actually shows that when you start with a solution, you provide hope. You make your audience more engaged, and for students taking this class and doing these stories, they gain valuable skills that are not usually covered because it’s not usually how journalism is done.”
This reporting project will train students in solutions journalism, prepare them for their careers as community-minded reporters, and advance the Social Journalism Network’s mission of reporting on social issues focusing on what works rather then the problems.
“I think this course is extremely important for the community,” said Max Poku-Kankam, student of this special topics course and Editor-in-Chief of The Western Carolinian. “[Because it] gets the conversation going about youth mental health again so that we can really understand how it affects not only children’s lives, but high schoolers and middle schoolers as well. We can help tackle these problems early so that they don’t become habitual thoughts and feelings that they have later on in life.”
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